Comprehensive and eloquent account of Fanon’s personal, intellectual and political life.

Born in Martinique, Frantz Fanon (1925–61) trained as a psychiatrist in Lyon before taking up a post in colonial Algeria. He had already experienced racism as a volunteer in the Free French Army, in which he saw combat at the end of the Second World War. In Algeria, Fanon came into contact with the Front de Libération Nationale, whose ruthless struggle for independence was met with exceptional violence from the French forces. He identified closely with the liberation movement, and his political sympathies eventually forced him out the country, whereupon he became a propagandist and ambassador for the FLN, as well as a seminal anticolonial theorist.

David Macey’s eloquent life of Fanon provides a comprehensive account of a complex individual’s personal, intellectual and political development. It is also a richly detailed depiction of postwar French culture. Fanon is revealed as a flawed and passionate humanist deeply committed to eradicating colonialism.

Now updated with new historical material, Frantz Fanon remains the definitive biography of a truly revolutionary thinker.

Reviews

“This year’s biographical tour de force.”

– New Statesman

“Macey’s richly informative and engaging biography provides the historical, social and cultural context that is essential for understanding this passionate and courageous intellectual.”

– Washington Post

“A prodigiously researched, absorbing book about the mind and the passion of a twentieth-century revolutionary.”

– New York Times Book Review

“...stands in a class of its own. It is unmatched in its care and attention to detail, in its author's knowledge of the multiple intellectual, cultural and political contexts in which the man moved”

– New Humanist

“Not just a lucid and well-researched account of the man and his works, it is one of the best books about contemporary history to have been published in recent years.”

– Literary Review

“Invaluable to scholars … an excellent guide.”

– Publishers Weekly

“A valuable and comprehensive introduction to the man and his work. David Macey is certainly someone who knows Fanon and the context extremely well and he writes lucidly and informa- tively.
For anyone interested in the Algerian war, colonialism or Fanon himself, this really is a must-read .”

Frantz Fanon, the great Martinican psychiatrist, philosopher and revolutionary, was born on this day in 1925. In this extract from Fanon: A Biography, David Macey explores the afterlives of Fanon's thought.

In late 1966, Stokely Carmichael was arrested during a Mississippi rally in the aftermath of the Selma campaign. On his release, he advocated Black Power, representing a break with the theory of nonviolent resistance. Strongly influenced by the work of Frantz Fanon and his landmark book Wretched of the Earth, along with others such as Malcolm X, Carmichael led SNCC to become more radical. He resigned as chairman in May 1967 and became more closely aligned with the Black Panther Party. To celebrate the anniversary of his birth, we publish the text of his speech delivered at the University of California at Berkeley expounding on his aims forty-nine years ago in October 1966.